Two Forks
by PhunkyBrewster
Summary: In response to an anonymous prompt submitted on Tumblr: "They do get something to eat after the Empire State Building. Maybe it's to-go or maybe they sit down, but there is food shared and eaten and a conversation happens Charm me!" One-shot. Mindy x Danny. Also submitting to HelenVanPattersonPatton's "The First Time Collection," as this is their first date.


They ordered everything to share. A romantic impulse that would have typically come from Mindy, Danny was surprised (and at the same time, not really. Not tonight, anyways) how fluidly the idea came from him.

"Hey, let's get something to split, what do you say?"

"Like what?" she asked with a tilt of her head and a spirited beam. "Liiiike…a milkshake? Cheese fries? Cheese_cake_?"

"What, a _whole_ _cheesecake_?"

"Maybe!"

Danny laughed in a way that allowed his teeth to dazzle in the fluorescent lighting of the 7th Avenue diner. "Whatever you want, Min. I'm serious, get whatever you want."

Mindy smiled and narrowed her eyes almost challengingly, daring him to stand by his word and allow her to order the entire menu, if she so desired. He simply met her gaze with a soft smile and even softer eyes, both of them sitting in comfortable silence until the visibly uninterested server approached their booth, holding a pen and small, rectangular pad of paper.

"What'll it be?" she asked, audibly smacking her gum. She glanced towards Danny, who had a hand gently wrapped around one of Mindy's. He tilted his chin towards her, indicating to the server that he would simply be following her lead. The apron-adorned woman pivoted towards Mindy.

Mindy looked up with a smile. "We'll have a chocolate-strawberry milkshake, the bacon-gouda fries, and a slice of plain cheesecake."

"Just one of each?" the server posed with raised eyebrows.

"Two forks and two straws, please," Danny piped in. Once the server made a final note she cleared the table of their menus and disappeared into the back, leaving the couple on their own once again. Danny raised his eyebrows in a wordless question.

Mindy shrugged. "A whole cheesecake would have been excessive."

Shrugging and maintaining a ghost of a smile, Danny turned his attention to their conjoined hands resting on the table while his thumb grazed back and forth slowly.

"You know," Mindy sighed, "I'm eventually going to need this hand to eat." Rather than pull it away, she gripped his fingers tighter.

With furrowed eyebrows, Danny replied, "I've seen you house an entire turkey dinner with one hand while the other typed a fan letter to Chris Pine!"

"You saw no such thing."

"Okay, sure," Danny murmured amusedly as he lifted her hand to his smiling lips for a reverent kiss. A rush of gratitude suddenly washed over him as he considered just how much he assumed she hated him not twelve hours prior. He held her hand to his lips not kissing it, but simply reveling in the feeling of her enchantingly soft skin.

"I missed those lips," Mindy confessed softly. "Even when I hated you, I'd imagine running my fingertips over your bottom lip."

"I hate that you hated me," he mumbled against her hand, looking up in heart-constricting earnest.

"I hate that you gave me a reason to hate you." The residual sadness in her voice stabbed at his gut with the efficiency of daggers. He encased her hand in both of his protectively and connected his gaze with hers.

"Mindy, I am so, so sorry," he began, exhaling as if he had held his breath for months. "For everything. I'm sorry that I allowed my fear to get the best of me. I'm sorry that I somehow confused dishonesty for romance. I'm sorry about my idiotic conclusion that something lesser with someone else made more sense than something more with you. I'm sorry I left you alone. Twice." He sucked in a deep breath, deeply considering keeping the next part to himself. They were together, they were in love, and they were about to share an overpriced plate of cheese fries. It seemed senseless to ruin this with information that would only upset her and possibly drive her out of his life for good, because how much cowardice and deception could one person honestly take?

But if they were going to do this for real, then there could be no more secrecy. Forever with Mindy Lahiri had no room for lies or the convenient withholding of information, and the least he could do was allow her to make her own fully informed decisions. He squeezed her hand a little tighter.

"I'm sorry that I almost left you alone for a third time. Mindy, tonight –"

"Wait!" Mindy held up her free hand, her eyes wide and insistent. "If it has anything to do with tonight, it really doesn't matter."

Danny sighed and shook his head. "Mindy, I don't want there to be any more secrets –"

Mindy leaned forward and placed her hand over his mouth. "And there won't be, Danny. I know there won't be because after tonight I _know_ you would _never_ be stupid enough to do anything to throw this away again." The unflinchingly authoritative look in her eyes made it very clear that she was to be taken very seriously. Then her eyes softened. "But tonight…you were there waiting when I got there. And seeing your face after I was certain that I would meet my death on the 64th floor was the most beautiful sight I could ever hope for. I don't want to taint that moment with a possible momentary bout of insecurity."

Rather than feel off he hook, Danny still felt saddled with information he thought she had a right to know, even if it did seem like she had already filled in the blanks herself. Feeling like he still owed her, he offered, "Well, you should know that nothing was stopping me from getting to you tonight, not even a cab to the ribs."

He began to chuckle lightly when Mindy gasped with comprehension. "Cab to the – Danny," she ripped her hand from his grasp and framed his face, forcing him to look directly at her. "Danny, are you telling me that you got hit by a car?!"

With a dismissive wave of his hand he replied, "It's fine. I'm fine, Min." He grabbed her hands and removed them from his face while maintaining his hold on them.

"You're not _fine_, Danny," Mindy hissed, panic coloring the tone of her voice. "That would explain what I thought looked like wincing on our way here! You're hurt and we need to go the hospital to make sure there isn't any internal bleeding or shattered bones."

"Mindy –"

"You could be dying right now, right under my nose," she babbled, extracting a hand once again and patting his cheek and the side of his neck. "These could be our last moments together all because you're too stubborn –"

"Min!" Danny's voice remained low, but firm. "Min, babe, I'm fine! Just a little sore. Nothing feels broken, I can breathe just fine, everything is alright. Just relax."

Mindy shook her head stubbornly. "Right now the adrenaline is still blocking out a lot of that pain, but come tomorrow you are going to feel like death and all of this –"

"- will still be worth it."

The sight of Mindy's mouth snapping shut as she tried to hide her flattered smile almost made Danny laugh out loud. He considered any time that he could successfully render her speechless a personal victory. Unable to withstand her doe-like eyes any longer he stood as tall as the booth table and the emerging rib pain would allow, bent forward, and slipped a hand behind her neck. Pulling her gently forward, he kissed her softly and languidly. Feeling her fingertips graze his jaw, he tilted his head slightly so that he could apply just a little more pressure, but did not feel an immediate need to deepen their kiss just yet. He liked these kinds of kisses better at the moment, the kind that felt like they had all the time in the world. After a moment he pulled back and kissed the tip of her nose just before returning to his seat. Mindy blew out a shaky breath.

"As, um –erm," Mindy cleared her throat, still trying to stable herself against the effects of a long-awaited kiss from Danny and find the much-needed words to argue back. "As skilled as you may be – and you are, clearly – that doesn't change the fact that you still need to take it easy. So, you're going to text Jeremy tonight and let him know that you're calling out tomorrow."

"Oh, am I?"

"Yes, and so am I."

"Wait, you're also texting Jeremy about me missing work or you're gonna play hooky with me?"

"We're not 'playing hooky'," Mindy corrected with the assistance of air quotes. "You're taking a necessary day off to recover and I'm staying with you to make sure that you rest properly and stay off of your feet."

Danny gave her a half smile as he took possession of one of her hands and started playing with a couple of her perfectly manicured fingers. "Okay, so you stay with me for the day and make sure nothing breaks and then what? We get started on those nine girls?"

Mindy scoffed, though she did smile at the implication. "Easy, buddy, I just took you back, like, an hour ago. Besides, what happened to 'just Anthony Francis?'"

"I'm not worried about Anthony Francis," he replied wistfully, absentmindedly rubbing the space between her knuckles on her ring finger. "I never would have expected you to want that many children."

Mindy began to answer back when the young server return with their milkshake and wordlessly placed it on the table between them. She plucked two straws from her apron and deposited them next to the glass before swinging around and heading back to the counter. Mindy grabbed a straw and immediately divested it from its wrapping.

"I don't know, something about a small army of little people that are the perfect mixture of me and my true love is a hard notion to pass up. And who am I to deny the world of a gorgeous brood of Indian-Italian women? Everyone would be like, 'Kardashians _who_? Who are _those_ hideous messes? Have you _seen_ the Lahiri-Castellanos?'" Danny chuckled fondly at Mindy's trademark enthusiasm. "Besides, I thought you'd be all for having a large family," she continued, dropping the straw in the shake. "Big, loud family dinners, lots of grandchildren and whatnot."

Danny shrugged as he mimicked Mindy's actions with his own straw. "I dunno, growing up and seeing my cousins running around and driving my aunts and uncles up the wall kind of turned me off of the idea at an early age. Plus, watching my Aunt Eva trying to keep up with all of them – constantly mixing up names and details – I never want our kids to feel lost in the shuffle. I loved the individual attention Richie and I got from Ma, especially after Dad left."

With her head tilted in wonder, Mindy appeared to be really considering what he was saying. Danny felt a combination of strange and elated to be talking so seriously about children. It was a conversation he'd never really had before, despite his prior relationship history. To risk propriety and bring up a subject like raising a family to someone he had never even gone on a date with and to have her respond so readily – almost too readily, with the nine girls and such, but that was Mindy for you – was such a wonderful payoff.

They both leaned forward at the same time, almost instinctively, and took a sip from their shake. It wasn't often that Danny allowed himself treats like this. A part of him wondered just how fat being in love with Mindy Lahiri would make him and he found that he was more excited than concerned. When he pulled away from his straw he could feel the cold, pearled drop of his shake on his bottom lip. To his delight, Mindy took the opportunity to reach out and wipe away the mess with the pad of her thumb, lingering longer than necessary. There was a moment there when he had to gage just how hungry he was, for slapping a large bill on the table and carrying her all the way to his apartment suddenly seemed like a much better option.

"How _are_ things with your dad?" she asked, snapping him out of his reverie.

Danny inhaled deeply. This had actually been weighing heavily on his mind for a while. "Things are still kind of cold, but I think seeing how quickly I allowed things to fall apart with you and me made me realize just how easy it is for decent people to make really stupid mistakes out of fear…or just believing that you know what's best for the people you love. And if you can still give me a second chance after the way I hurt you, then I think it might not be so impossible for me to start to forgive him, you know?"

"Babe, that's great!" Mindy squealed, giving him one of the brightest smiles he had seen all night.

"It's still gonna take time," Danny continued softly, bolstered by her approval, "but I'm at least in a place where I'm willing to hear him out. Context helps, even if the context is really shitty."

Silence hung in the air between them as Mindy considered him with a gaze so precious that it made his heart ache in a wonderful way.

"I love you," she said in almost a whisper.

"God, I love you, too," he replied with a sigh.

"Let's get the rest of the food to go."

Danny raised his eyebrows in interest. "Oh, yeah?"

Mindy nodded while she flagged down their server with one hand and gestured vaguely towards Danny with the other. "Seeing you sitting there, grinning through an injury like a gorgeous fool, talking about your personal growth and our kids, it's all working for me in a way that's not befitting for a public setting."

Not needing any further explanation, Danny rose to slight hover in order to pull his wallet out of his back pocket and opened it up to thumb through his bills. "Whatever you wish, beautiful."

As the server meandered to their table, Mindy leaned forward and whispered with a salacious smile, "I promise to be very, very gentle."

With that, Danny leaned forward and planted a firm, possessive kiss on Mindy lips. As he pulled away, he growled. "Don't be."

* * *

**A/N: I sincerely hope that this contained some of what the you were looking for, Anon! I saw your prompt that you submitted to The Mindy Project Fanfiction Prompts blog on Tumblr and liked he idea so much that I wanted to try. Fingers crossed that you like it!**

**Hollaatchyagirl,**

**Phunky**


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